Deshaun Watson, the star Houston Texans quarterback, on Monday formally rebutted the accusations of the 22 girls who declare he engaged in sexual misconduct in opposition to them throughout therapeutic massage remedy classes, accusing these girls in a civil court docket submitting of fabricating their tales for cash.
According to the submitting, which addresses all 22 claims in opposition to Watson, “These lawsuits are replete with mischaracterizations of Mr. Watson’s conduct. These range from being misleading, to fraudulent, to slanderous.”
Watson acquired the names of all his accusers solely final week, after the fits have been filed in opposition to him anonymously starting in mid-March. Two of his accusers voluntarily recognized themselves in April and judges that month dominated that the women bringing suits against Watson must identify themselves, in response to state legislation.
Since then, Watson and his attorneys have scrambled to research the accusers and their claims, and stated in the court docket submitting that they found proof that “numerous allegations in this onslaught of cases are simply not true or accurate.” In rebutting some allegations, the submitting stated that eight of the ladies who’ve introduced swimsuit bragged about massaging Watson and 7 “willingly worked or offered to work” with Watson after the alleged misconduct was stated to have occurred, together with one girl who confirmed up at his home to offer him one other therapeutic massage even earlier than he had booked an appointment along with her.
The submitting additionally claimed that some plaintiffs instructed others that they wished to “get money out of” Watson, that a few of the accusers lied about being traumatized by the conduct Watson’s accused of and that some scrubbed or deleted their social media accounts, disposing of proof Watson would want to mount a correct protection.
“I truly believe that this is a cash grab against a wealthy athlete,” Rusty Hardin, Watson’s lead lawyer, stated Monday in a phone interview. “If you’re asking, ‘Are you saying that all 22 are lying about whether he committed sexual misconduct?’ I sure am.”
Hardin stated in an April 9 information convention that there have been “some consensual encounters,” between Watson and his accusers.
Tony Buzbee, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, stated Monday in a press release that Watson’s response to the accusations did nothing to assist his trigger. He known as Watson’s “weak and vague” allegations in opposition to his accusers in Monday’s court docket submitting “demonstrably false.”
“As fully anticipated and despite his lawyer’s previous statements, Deshaun Watson’s only defense is to call these brave women liars,” Buzbee stated.
Monday’s court docket submitting is only one step in an extended authorized course of that would take months, if no more than a 12 months, to conclude. The lawsuits have accused Watson, 25, of participating in a sample of lewd habits with girls he employed through social media platforms to offer him massages this 12 months and final. The claims accuse him of exposing himself throughout massages, shifting his physique in a technique to make his feminine therapeutic massage therapists contact his penis, or coercing the ladies to the touch him in a sexual method. In two of the circumstances, girls say he compelled them to carry out oral intercourse.
At least one different therapeutic massage therapist who had not introduced swimsuit in opposition to Watson publicly accused him of comparable habits, although she didn’t rent Buzbee to symbolize her. She told Sports Illustrated in late March that she was contemplating authorized motion.
The court docket doc filed Monday stated one of many two plaintiffs who accused Watson of compelled sexual acts, “sought to ‘blackmail” Watson before suing him.
“She asked him to pay her $30,000 for ‘indefinite silence’ as a result of her encounter can be ‘embarrassing’ if revealed,” the court docket submitting stated of 1 accuser.
That plaintiff additionally requested Watson’s advertising supervisor for a duplicate of the nondisclosure settlement that she and Watson had signed “because she did not want people in her industry to know she had provided oral sex to her massage client,” the submitting stated, including that Watson has a recording of a telephone name of a dialog in which she discusses her issues.
Hardin, in Monday’s court docket doc, requested a jury trial. He later defined {that a} trial could be the one approach the general public can weigh all of the proof and rightly determine what occurred between Watson and the ladies he employed to therapeutic massage him.
“I’m totally comfortable that if there is a jury trial one day, a jury will find every one of these accusations false,” Hardin stated. “But if we have to resort to the court, it’s a long way away.”
